Spielman Describes Increased Significance of 2021 Senior Bowl to Vikings

[Viktor]

Spielman credited the NFL and team officials beyond the personnel side for the operations of the 2020 NFL Draft, which was held virtually with GMs and coaches working from their homes.


"It just goes to show you that when you've been in this business as long as I have … it's become such a part of your routine that you're, I don't want to say 'callous' to it, but 'just tell us what to do, and we'll figure out how to adjust,' " Spielman said. "Because there's a lot of smart people in this business, not only on the football side but other people that are involved – the IT side and how we ended up doing all the actual meetings."


Spielman credited Senior Bowl Executive Director Jim Nagy for making modifications to this year's event that are intended to maximize the impact of in-person interaction but limit possible exposure to the virus.


In addition to the three days of practices, which wrapped up Thursday, Nagy modified the weigh-in so that official measurements could be gathered. He also added more formal times for interviews and built socially distant booths with protective plexiglass dividers.


"This game has such a major influence because this is the only time this offseason we're going to see these football players doing what we're watching right now, individual drills … and the other big thing I think people do not realize is that we're doing in-person interviews," Spielman said. "And how Jim Nagy set that up over there, where we have plexiglass between us, everybody has their mask on, and we're going to be able to interview every single player down here. So it's four days of interviews from 7 to 11:15 at night, but that's the only chance you're going to do it in-person. Because everything from this event going forward is going to be virtual. So, it was a big point of emphasis for us to make sure we do everything we can to get the work done we need to get done down here."


Teams will be able to conduct video interviews with draft-eligible prospects in the coming weeks, adding to the work that their scouting departments were able to accomplish in a college season that included cancelations, opt-outs and reschedules. Spielman said the Vikings and other teams must figure out how to evaluate players in spite of the gap years that occurred.


"That's going to probably be the most difficult part. We're looking at kids who played in '19, they decided to opt out this year, a couple of them did decide to play in the Senior Bowl, so you're going to get a glimpse of where they're at," Spielman said. "Others are not going to play in the Senior Bowl, so it's going to be a little more challenging as far as getting a true evaluation and a true big picture of how he's progressed through his career because, all of a sudden, you have a year missed. We're pretty big from an analytics standpoint in a lot of different things we do in an analytics standpoint to try to predict where these guys are potentially going to be as pros, but it is definitely a challenge this year, especially the guys that are not going to be able to play in the Senior Bowl."


The 72nd Reese's Senior Bowl is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. (CT) Saturday on NFL Network.